Facebook post

So there it is. The post I made to Facebook that got me banned for three days. As you can see from the comment I made above the meme, I disagreed with its editorial thrust. Obviously, Facebook makes no such distinctions. If you post something objectionable to their editors, even if you use it to expose its fallacy, they bring down the ban hammer. Nick is pissed at me . . .

for not figuring that out before I pressed publish. Fair enough. As stated in the headline above, this is not the first time I’ve been banned. (The last time I was banned was for showing a picture of a toddler dressed as a jihadi decapitating a teddy bear with the caption “keep your powder dry.”) It won’t happen again. But I wonder: should Facebook posters be allowed to publish material like this? Your thoughts?

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103 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t have facebook because it’s the modern equivalent of sending chain mail in my opinion and a symptom of the degeneration of society due to the fact that people can’t get off their damn phones long enough to talk to one another. Also, I don’t need Zuckerberg knowing when I take a dump.

    • To be fair, calling someone a “window licking retard with a bowl haircut” would get someone either warned or banned here in the TTAG comments section. So I see nothing wrong with what Facebook did considering TTAG’s own policy against attacking commentors or people involved in posts – now if I ran TTAG or Facebook, I’d have a much different view. In fact when TTAG instituited their current policy, I was and still am against moderating the comments.

      I also don’t think the meme itself is a good statement. Banning anything, whether it be CSA flags or Islamic messages, is not trend we should set as a society. I would never share that meme on my Facebook account for any reason.

      • I understand and appreciate the right of a website to delete posts and/or ban commentators. Obviously. But my comment – the context – was not considered. FWIW.

        • That’s the problem with content banning. Eventually, the oversensitives will sob and cry until you have to delete things that are on the “right” side of an issue, but still contain the scary image or word.

          Or maybe the FB police thought your comment was a cute attempt around their policy. Like if I tried to get around your rules here by posting a comment like, “TTAG’s policy prohibits me from saying so-and-so is a mouth-breathing, cocaine-addled pedophile, so I won’t say that.”

          Facebook has some sophisticated data-mining software. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have an image-matching algorithm running that automatically flags any image of the stars-and-bars.

        • How much does context matter when calling someone a window licking retard? Either you called them that or you didn’t. That’s probably where FB dinged you, not for the Islam comment. Similarly, it likely was the suggestion of violence against children in the earlier ban.

          I don’t disagree with your point, I think. I’m not sure if you are complaining about the response to what’s-his-name or the response to what’s-her-name or the hypocricy.

        • I have no problem with drawing analogous parallels and I think that is what got the FB ban.

          I don’t read that post as encouraging bans, in fact I read it as protesting the Confederate Flag ban and then offering what a similar icon ban related to San Bernardino would look like.

          I might have worded it a bit differently but the point remains, either go ban happy or don’t, anything in between is hypocrisy.

        • But my comment – the context – was not considered.

          There are two questions here:

          1) Agree or disagree with Facebook’s editorial policy?
          2) Agree or disagree with Facebook’s right to enforce their editorial policy?

          While I disagree vehemently with Facebook’s editorial policy, I agree wholeheartedly with Facebook’s right to enforce that policy.

      • We need a big infusion of Sikhs to emigrate the the US to keep things on the level. Plus they have some badass knives.

  7. A_ _ book can do whatever it wants on A_ _book, and they can answer personally for whatever ripples it creates IN REAL LIFE.

    Ezra Pound got an airy villa in Italy, with a 360 degree view, free for a year.

  8. Facebook is like a privately owned bulletin board in the center of town. Everybody in town wants to use it but the owner gets to say how it is used.
    So you either conform to Facebook’s luke-warm everybody be nice to everybody policies or don’t use it.
    Sure, some pro-us content is tolerated but that won’t last. In time the totality of Facebook will be beige and bland.
    That’s why so many teens hate it but they use it anyway because all their friends use it.
    Facebook is the greatest society censoring tool ever and there is no way to beat it without a massive cultural shift that alters the targeting of advertising firms because right now cultivating bland and beige is profitable.

    • Teens actually don’t use it nearly as much.

      That’s because their parents use it.

      Many teens are looking for ways to communicate without running afoul of social control from elders. Facebook is not nearly the best medium for this.

      They use tools like SnapChat now. Also, some twitter for public communication, because it doesn’t have the walled garden aspects of Facebook.

      I haven’t had a Facebook account since 2011, I used the link that was provided to do a full delete, which I don’t think is available anymore, and technically probably didn’t do much of anything.

      • I deleted all of my posts, texts, notes, etc several years ago before deleting my profile. I wasn’t happy building a dossier on myself. I am under no delusions that my info is actually gone or is not still being shopped around to advertisers or government agencies.

        • Ok, the hipster in me has to throw out this caveat: I joined facespace before it hit big and everyone else hopped on board. Then, once everyone else DID hop on board, the hipster in me wanted out. Of course the lazy-ass in me didn’t want to hassle with all the BS I read one had to do to actually get out of there, so I just “forgot” my password and haven’t darkened their proverbial door in the last few years.

  9. Facebook posters should only be allowed to post what Facebook allows them to post. Just like TTAG commenters should only be allowed to post what TTAG allows them to post. It’s their ball field, we’re just playing on it.

    Otherwise, domain names are cheap and WordPress is easy.

  11. You are not allowed to criticize Islam. Period. End of discussion.

    Oh, and of course we believe in free speech!

    You can criticize Christians all you want, but the second you mention Muslims, you’re banned from Facebook and called a racist.

    • Well said, sir.

      RF, you made a great point. However, that point was critical of Islam and contained a “racist” flag. While I applaud you on being lyrical and politically incorrect, Facebook does not.

      • Actually, Robert posted that for the purpose of stating he DISAGREED with it. And still got banned.

  13. Why don’t you move away from Facebook and use Twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr, or really anything but facebook. Just use facebook to redirect to content hosted in other places.

    • Why in the world are you using ANY of them? Get a life! New cars, especially expensive ones, spend their advertising dollars telling us about how hooked up you can be while piloting a couple tons at 80 mph. I don’t even turn on the radio! At the end of the day, your 10 hours pursuing all these silly platforms has accomplished absolutely nothing, why not just sign off and get a job?

      • Larry, I so want to sarcastically say, “Psh, what do you think I do all day AT my job?” But a) I’m semi-retired/semi-unemployed (toe-MAY-toe/to-MAH-toe) at the moment and 2) have stopped using the facespace.

  14. So you found the original on Facebook? And got banned for your comment? Ah, your sin was to show progressive racism, and more damningly, to show their ridiculousness.

  15. Acquaintances and family members always look askance at me when they ask why I don’t post pictures of my family (and especially my daughter) on Facebook so everyone can see them.

    My reply is that the photos I have of my family are private, and will be shared only with those who are close friends or family. I have no desire to share them with Mark Zuckerberg or his database administrators or other employees of Facebook, or any other entity that enters into a business relationship with Facebook.

    I maintain a FB account mostly to keep in touch with a handful of acquaintances from college and high school who live in different parts of the world. And to ‘de-tag’ any photos that others might post with my name on it.

    Mark Zuckerberg is not your friend.

  18. Zuckerberg was one of many who fell for the clock boy’s story. He was impressed by the store-bought clock with its cover removed and placed into a box. So I’m glad we have a person of such careful and reasoned thinking making value judgments like this.

  19. “should Facebook posters be allowed to publish material like this?”

    It’s their sandbox. They let you play in it for free, and they make the rules.

    I don’t like their rules, which is one of many reasons I don’t play there. The “sandbox” analogy is particularly appropriate here, because it’s where the cats go to poop.

  20. Wear it as a badge of honor/be known by your enemies.

    Facebook/social media is just electronic crack for fools. 10yrs from now will just be one more forgotten fad we Americans foisted on a gullible world. And Zuckerbergler is a twit.

  21. Come on, Robert. A lot of us posters spend a lot of time defending your “no flaming” policy by saying “His site, his rules.” Same goes for Facebook. It doesn’t matter whether I agree with the policy or not, it’s not my money paying to keep the lights on.

    • I’m with you Stinkeye…and someone must really hate you to report THAT. I see far worse daily. Whatever-your site-your rules. FWIW I really don’t want to see bowl boy or burka babes…

    • The feds are paying Facebook in exchange for hooks into their database. Those payments are in the form of tax breaks and refunds. So don’t think for a second your tax dollars are not in part paying to keep the lights on.

  22. Perhaps we should beore open to unfriendly non politically acceptable speech here on tag just to make sure we aren’t like jihad book errr butt book errr drunk college girl pic website I mean

  23. We need a big infusion of Sikhs to emigrate the the US to keep things on the level. Plus they have some badass knives.

  24. RF, rather than risking more bans, when you have a tid-bit like that, why not just post a link back to TTAG or Instagram or whatever?

  25. I have no problem with the context of the post and agree with it. However, as a father of a girl with special needs I do take offense to the word “retard”.

    You are the company you keep, even though I agree with the post.

  26. Robert nothing wrong at all with your reasoning and responsible post. It’s to bad the lemmings at Facebook have become so PC it’s disgusting. Censoring anyone anywhere even here, has become an accepted practice. Maybe needed but never right in my personal book. My Facebook page hasn’t been looked at by myself in few years. But it is loaded with forwarded articles from here and other sources all progun. Just to piss off my former Liberal wrong headed high school and college long past friends whose thoughts and daily blather had gotten tiresome.

  27. I don’t agree with the sentiments of the graphic either, but Facebook is wimp-oriented anyway and just proved it by banning you, RF. On balance, you should be proud you exposed them for the social/political cowards they are. Good Work!

  28. Robert, I suspended my Facebook account about 3 or 4 months ago and I am glad.

    It’s not mine and it is not paid by my taxes.

    First, I consider FB as somebody’s front yard.

    If they won’t let me put up a sign on their yard that is inconsistent with THEIR standards, then I just won’t use it.
    But really the main reason, I admit, I quit FB was because it was just waisting too much of my time.
    I also friends who were waisting their time living on FB NIGHT AND DAY, 24/7.
    One final thing.
    There are a few publishing websites that won’t let their readers sign in WITHOUT a FB account.
    I refuse to be COERCED into doing something or joining a group that I don’t want to join.
    My choice, but I have more peace of mind.
    My advice to you.
    Robert, my advice to you is drop your FB account.

    • Hell, I’m wary of joining any group that would have me as a member. I’m certainly not keen on coercion to join.

      • This is one of the reasons (I claim) why I’m still single… I don’t want to date a woman who’d go out with a guy like me!

  29. And yet Facebook and twitter allow Jihadists to publish calls to murder Israelis. Go figure.

  30. Depends on why you were banned. As others have stated, the “window licking retard with a bowl haircut” was unnecessary, inflammatory and in poor taste. If you were banned for your point of view that would be “wrong”, but Facebook is a private company and entitled to their own set of rules legally speaking.
    Not that I agree with private business being allowed to stifle your 1st amendment rights but the sad fact of the matter is that Americans in general are to lazy and self centered to change it. Your simply not going to get enough people to boycott facebook over the 1st amendment and facebook knows it. Even “the people of the gun” can’t come together and boycott companies that trample the 2nd Amendment.

    • What “1st amendment rights” do you have to post content on a medium you do not own?

      If the mods here at TTAG redact/remove one of your comments to a post here, have your 1st amendment rights been violated?

      • Facebook and TTAG may be private businesses, but they are both still public forums. So the short answer is YES your 1st Amendment rights have been violated.
        However as I said in my comment it comes down to why the post was deleted or the ban was enacted. As a society and as determined by the courts that right is not without limits. “You can’t yell fire in a crowded building.” If your comments are racist, unnecessarily inflammatory, hate mongering etc. I am pretty sure when TTAG edits or deletes post it is because those posts fall into this category and not because TTAG disagrees with your opinion.

        • True dat. Our posting policy: no flaming the authors, website or fellow commentators. Ad hominem attacks will be deleted.

        • @Chip

          I’m glad you understand this. It may be visible to the public (hence, some people call it a “public forum”) but it’s not a public forum by that fact alone.

          I cannot recall whether or not you’re one of the ones who refuses to make the same distinction for carry in private businesses, but I’ll say this for the benefit of anyone else who doesn’t see it…a business is not “public” because they let people walk through the front door, just as Facebook and TTAG are not “public” because they let people post. When they open their doors, or open a comment area, they DON’T hand over control to anyone who happens by.

        • The 1st Amendment has no meaning in the absence of state involvement. Your negative right to be free from Congressional coercion of free speech is not in question here.

        • Hi SteveInCO:

          Property rights do not extend to disarming me, only to trespassing me. Absent the contemporary “right of public accommodation”, I would support a business owner’s right of refusal of service to anyone. And if I were ever asked to leave (for any reason), I would do so.

          But the distinction is that property rights extend only so far as allowing/prohibiting the presence of the person on the property, not to disarming a person allowed to be present on the property.

  31. The cyber troopers stood guard on the information super highway. They’d set up their checkpoints and erected their blockades.

    They’d been tipped off that a man who still believed in the marketplace of ideas would be travelling this way. Their informant had further advised that the man was heavily armed with bias-piercing critical thinking skills and assault thoughts.

    No matter. They’d get him.

  32. Why do people continue to be surprised by such things happening? Facebook’s sandbox: Facebook’s rules. If you want to post your own editorial content free of censorship, do it using a medium you own.

    • By this line of thought you should not be allowed to picket outside of any business as that business generally owns the property surrounding the building. Their property, their rules!

        • Not only do I disagree, but have personal experience 10x over and have spoken with 2 separate lawyers on the matter.
          Every time the police were called and the “private” business owner was told there was nothing they could do even though it was their property. As long as I was not interfering with their customers or yelling racist, hateful, inflammatory etc and simply peaceably holding a sign I was well within my 1st Amendment rights.

        • John, I don’t know where you live, but here in Texas, if you roll up on someone’s private property with a picket sign, you’d better be prepared to scoot when the cops are called, or start thinking about who you’re going to freely speak with on your one phone call…

        • There has to be some different classification, then. If someone pitches a tent in my front yard and commences waving signs protesting whatever, they will leave very quickly and with some level of serious injuries. I will explain that to the police if they ask, and if they would like to arrest me for it, I will shoot them. My property is PRIVATE! Simply proclaiming you have a right to use it for your purposes, whatever they are, without my permission is a very unhealthy idea.

  33. With more sites tying to Facebook, and some sites requiring Facebook to comment, an argument could be made that is becoming a public accommodation, therefore free speech rules apply.

    • I got rid of my facebook account a couple of years ago. Now it is very difficult for me to post elsewhere. It’s not the “mark of The Beast” level yet but a little scary nontheless. I have seriously considered creating a dummy account just so I can post.

    • I do not log in to Facebook to comment on other sites, as a general rule. That said: using your Facebook login credentials to comment on some third-party site does not require any other Facebook action, including posting on Facebook.

  34. Another reason I don’t do Facebook . I saw and retweeted that pic on Twitter a few days ago. I just checked and is still there and I have not been banned.

  35. I never have been a member of any of the social media things, so really don’t have an opinion on them banning anyone, but figure it happens a lot. The sheepherders need to keep the sheep going in the right direction after all…they just keep going left.

    As for the meme, its spot on. It needs to spread.

    Hat tip sir.

  36. That’s odd. I have at least one friend that posted that meme and didn’t get banned. Meanwhile, Facebook is openly celebrating a lot of hateful, incorrect, and divisive leftist nonsense.

    I really need to get off of Facebook.

  37. Did your FB suspension notice look something like this?
    Why would you be surprised that you’d be banned from FB?? Our community standards start off with “ We want people to feel safe when using Facebook”. Doesn’t that sound at all familiar with what you’ve heard from nice Mr. Bloomberg and his minions?? We billionaires have to stick together you know.

    As everyone knows “Guns aren’t safe”. Guns are murderous evil and hateful things and so are the people who buy own or possess or even talk about them.

    Don’t you know that if you even dare to think about guns let alone talk about guns on FB, you’ve clearly crossed the line into FB’s “hate speech” zone. BAD BAD BAD

    But as FB’s community standards so eloquently should have reminded you:
    “you may encounter opinions that are different from yours, which we believe can lead to important conversations about difficult topics. To help balance the needs, safety, and interests of a diverse community, however, we may remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees…Not all disagreeable or disturbing content violates our Community Standards.”

    We’ll just ban the opinions and contents we don’t like!
    Have a nice day
    FB

  38. BTW

    You use an Iphone on w/ AT&T as your carrier. Hacking & intel mining are built on the small things 🙂

    • Gee Buster -it looks like one giant ad. Not interested. I got the 2 dozen FB gun groups for that. The gubmint knows who you are anyway-unless you’re from Pakistan apparently…

  40. ““window licking retard with a bowl haircut” Had that very impression of this psychopathic moron first time I saw his photo. I have no opinion regarding Face Book. If you post a cute animal, I’ll give it a “like”, otherwise don’t give a rat’s rear end.

    Thanks for sharing what you posted! It was spot on, a shame we live in a candy ass nation.
    My favorite quote of all time is “If you can’t say something nice, come sit by me” by Dorthy Parker

  41. Only one problem with this. The Confederate flag hasn’t been banned.

    And what about the flip side? If 2 Muslim terrorists are representative of the whole lot, surely the likes of Dylann Roof, Robert Dear, Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh etc. are representative of all Christians.

    • Damn LocNar (nice “Heavy Metal” reference by the way), you sure are making it tough for me to be an anti-Muslim bigot… what with using logic and stuff.

  42. RF,

    The image you posted conveys an inflammatory message of hate, and your disclaimer may easily be overlooked. A less reasonable person than you might get the wrong idea and take violent action upon members of a mosque, and nobody wants that.

    Consider an image of caricature of a Jewish settler from the 1930’s juxtaposed to a picture of a hateful small-minded racist with colorful text inciting hostile treatment towards the foreigners. If someone were to post a small caption of “nope” above this image, to a message board that you moderate with an audience of idiots, would you leave it to the idiots to not miss the point and do something terrible?

    I feel about censorship the way I feel about gun control. Personally, I would leave the image up there for the adults to chew on and the babies to choke on. But I can understand why others might not agree with me, because it just breaks their soft little hearts every time they see a baby choke to death.

    • The image you posted conveys an inflammatory message of hate, and your disclaimer may easily be overlooked.

      From what I’ve read here, many of the commenters here DID INDEED overlook the disclaimer. I suspect FB did as well.

  43. Obviously with my name being Jamaal, I am black. In addition, I am Muslim. I do not understand the infatuation with defending the Confederate flag. I know people will say it’s a sign of southern heritage and that is not true. The Confederate Army wanted to destroy the Union. They wanted to dissolve our country. In short, they were a terrorist fighting force within America. I understand white people dont want to view the fighting force for what it truly was, but the facts are not debatable. To fly the Confederate flag is the same as flying the ISIS/L flag. Just because we share genes with the Confederate terrorists does not change their agenda.

    Do I agree with Facebook? No! I think anytime someone exposes their own mental deficiencies we should leave it up so we can easily identify idiots. We have to remember the terrorist Confederate Army killed more Americans than any other form of terrorism be it foreign or domestic. Let us use logic as we address issues and not biases that are exaggerated.

    • It’s interesting how much you know, since it is basically all wrong. Work from here, the fighting forces on both sides of the conflict were white, your racist crap notwithstanding. Blacks in America who had been sold into slavery by blacks in Africa did not achieve freedom by way of Jesse Jackson, but by way of people who looked and thought like Abraham Lincoln. And there was not a terrorist group fighting *within* America, they were attempting to *leave* what they perceived as a voluntary coalition of equals, as it was originally intended. OTOH, the northern aggressors desired to force their will on lesser people, and they prevailed.

      • The truth hurts you Larry. The Confederate Army wanted to eliminate the constitution. They were fighting to distroy our country. Nothing I said was racist. You say the north was forcing their will on the south, but I guess the southern slave owners were not doing that to black men and women.

        You cannot equate a mosque or wearing hijab to flying the banner of a force that wanted to separate from our union, the Confederacy. That same force thought it was fine to own human beings and force them to labor under fear of being murdered. ALL TERRORISM IS HORRIBLE. The United States defeated the terrorist General Robert Lee and we will defeat ISIS/L

        • “The truth hurts you Larry. The Confederate Army wanted to eliminate the constitution. They were fighting to distroy our country. “

          So, you don’t know what the term “secession” means, right?

          The only reason there was any “fight” at all was because the Federal government decided to disallow secession.

          Now, you can think secession was Constitutional or not…that’s actually a subject of considerable debate.

          But, had the Federal government not sought to force the seceding states to remain in the Union, there would not have been a Civil War.

    • JSJ,

      you absolutely fixed that sentence. Not all white people are trying to revise and hide the horrors that our country experienced as the Confederate terror army attempted to ruin our Constitution. We cannot equate us allowing religious freedom with a confederate movement that denied humans the inalienable right of human freedom.

      If you feel that sentence inadvertently implicated you I apologize.

  46. Saw this pic on Facebook the yesterday. A friend of mine shared it.

    On a side note, my current favorite pro-2a facebook post is the one that said “If Bruce Jenner can keep his wiener and still be considered a woman, then I can keep all of my guns and still be considered disarmed.”

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